Las Vegas doctor, producer fight cancer to the end

He could be attending medical conferences in Austria or London or Paris and he would always get back to them by email within a couple of hours.

No matter where Dr. Nicholas Vogelzang was, Roxane Quinn said, he never was too busy to call in prescriptions or to answer questions about the condition of her ailing husband.

"The man was unbelievable," she said. "I don't know how he does it. And he wasn't giving us special treatment. He acts this way with all his patients. And he's a researcher, too. I don't know how he has the energy."

It was just a few days after John Quinn's October death from prostate cancer, and his wife and children wanted to publicly thank the doctor whose compassion seemed to know no bounds. Too often today, they said, you hear only about the doctors who care about money more than people.

Vogelzang, 61, is a medical oncologist with Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada. One of the world's foremost cancer researchers, he was recognized recently by the local Red Cross as one of its Everyday Heroes for bringing the prostate cancer-fighting drug Provenge to Las Vegas for clinical trials.

Quinn, who died at age 63 after battling prostate cancer for 10 years, was a movie and TV producer whose credits ranged from the "Goldy: The Last of the Golden Bears" trio of movies to the cable TV series "Sin City Diaries." There will be a memorial service for Quinn at the Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills, Calif., at noon Friday.

I first met Quinn in Vogelzang's office in January. I was researching a story on trials of drugs that gave Las Vegans hope, including XL184, an experimental drug showing effectiveness in treating tumors that have spread to the bone.

As Vogelzang examined Quinn, already on the drug and fast running out of options for survival, the men started laughing.

They went down memory lane about the six or seven times they turned back the cancer that could have killed him.

"We could make a movie about how we always come up with something at the last minute to keep me alive," Quinn said.

Roxane Quinn was awed by the relationship her husband and Vogelzang developed over six years.

"They were like buddies fighting something together," she said.

Tiffany Jacobs Quinn, a human resources professional in Hollywood, said she couldn't believe how her father could reach Vogelzang "day or night" by email.

"It struck me as going above and beyond," she said. "I saw how difficult it was for employees in our organization to get a doctor to even fill out a form. It made us feel like someone really had Dad's back."

Vogelzang said he doesn't see his accessibility to patients and their families as a favor.

"We're in a fight together," he said. "They don't abuse my availability. Each patient teaches me so much that I view my patients as my teachers. They teach me how I want to live my life and, in fact, what I hope to be like as my life comes to an end. I only wish I could be as optimistic as John. Right up until the end, he pushed me to find something new to keep him alive. Lord knows I wish I could have."

When I last saw Quinn in September at his Summerlin home, he described how his cancer seemed to shift into another gear. Morphine couldn't kill the pain. On occasion, he said, he screamed so loudly he thought he could be heard in Los Angeles.

"It was hell on Earth," Roxane Quinn said, weeping. "I felt so helpless not being able to help him. At the end it actually moved into his spinal canal."

Quinn's son Devon, who works in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles, said he never will forget how his father and Vogelzang fought the prostate cancer. He wrote the physician a thank you note, which reads in part:

"Most doctors would have given up hope or willingness to continue treating him. You didn't. You gave ... my father ... the ability to keep dreaming, to fight, to keep hope alive, and inspire him by pulling treatment after treatment out of your sleeves, which kept him healthier and with us longer than expected."

Paul Harasim is the medical reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His column appears Mondays. Harasim can be reached at pharasim@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2908.